Author Archive for Terrapin Trader

First found out about options in 1995.From the arcane magazine Exchange and Mart! First trade- a covered call on VOD in 1999. Made 10%,VOD almost doubled. That's when I realised I was not a good trader,and I was forgiven thanks to the amazing world of exchange traded options

Up 3% on the week- nobody saw that coming, but we don’t mind.Vol dropping massively,as you’d expect. Did I take advantage at 45DTE on Wednesday? Not saying-ok, I missed out! Grrrrrrr New Year, Same Old Crazy Here we are in 2019, and we are sure all our readers are not only solvent, but profitable. So […]

Posted on Twitter by Tasty Trade https://twitter.com/tastytraderMike/status/1079802382652002305 For Comparison I have tried to crunch a few numbers-see options calculator results below. We see here a price discrepancy in risk/reward and this may be due to VFTSE=22 VIX=28. Thus we note US volatility is a lot higher than the UK. Who knows what that may be attributed […]

What The Actual????? A Wild Ride This Week So, nobody was more relieved than I that the US markets smashed up in record trading after horrible falls. Though it’s silly season, it is unsettling to see such huge drops. We also saw 10 consecutive down days on the SPX. Maybe it was algo’s pension funds […]

Down Down Down Oh dear- the US got smashed to bits: SPX 2591-2416 a ‘uge 7% drop. We fared somewhat better- around 2% drop but from the high 7790 in August we are off by almost 14%. The omens are not good and we should bear in mind that the big pension funds get their […]

Up For The Week- Didn’t Feel Like It Despite a rock solid time tested number of strategies and managed risk, I still get bouts of ‘uncomfortable concern’. I have to remind myself how many times I’ve been in trades and made ££££££££, when things looked ugly. February and September this year were big drops, but […]

What Happened? Or Rather What Didn’t A week of roller coaster action that this trader did not foresee. I try to stick to the knitting, and place my trades ±45DTE (days to expiry). Thus Wednesday’s drop looked opportune- volatility at 18%– not bad, I’m thinking. I’d put in a cheeky offer. (Tuesday gave rise to […]

Big Ups After Big Downs, Then Up….and Down I was surprised by the down move on Tuesday- matched by Wednesday’s bonkers rise. GBPUSD has been up and down, quite predictably. Dismally missing out this week, failing to add to my positions. I took in a credit of 24 last week and for more of the […]

Naked Sellers Destroyed CATASTROPHIC LOSS EVENT On November 15, 2018, OptionSellers.com notified its investors in an email entitled “Catastrophic Loss Event” that it not only lost all their money, but that they would also owe money to Intl FC Stone for margin calls. According to OptionSellers.com, they lost a substantial portion of their investors’ assets […]

A Bit of A Drop, Take a Break, Sit (See what I did there?) Guffaws of laughter, conspicuous by absence! I love wordplay and enjoy humour in our bewildered media. Nobody can honestly have a clue what it now means to stay in or leave the EU. The overly lauded economic growth is a symptom […]